Elin Hilderbrand - Here’s to Us

Everything is going smoothly.

Deacon has a $2,000-a-week coke habit, and he goes through a bottle of Jameson every three to four days. He tells himself it’s medicinal: he needs the coke to stay awake and the whiskey to fall asleep. Anyone who thinks he has a “problem” has never opened a restaurant before.

Ellery is six years old and wears her hair in two braids. She joins the Brownies, and the local troop meets in the basement of the Cowgirl, a bar in the West Village. Deacon takes Ellery every week and sits up at the bar with moms Janelle and Greta Rae and dad Potter. They drink a few beers and mow through bowls of peanuts, dropping the shells on the floor. They talk about their kids and schools and a little bit about their lives. Deacon regales his new friends with the names of the celebrities who have come to eat at the Board Room-Beyoncé, Clint, Kiefer. Potter is a financial columnist for the Huffington Post; Janelle does hair and makeup on CBS This Morning; Greta Rae is married to an advertising mogul.

Deacon never wants Brownies to end. It’s the happiest hour of his week.

And then, one week, Potter doesn’t show up, and Janelle and Greta Rae come in red-eyed and weepy.

Haven’t you heard? they ask.

What? he says.

Potter was high on crystal meth and jumped in front of the F train, Janelle says. He’s dead.

Deacon swears he will never drink or smoke or snort again, a vow that lasts until midnight.

She wanted to stay in the outdoor shower for the rest of her natural life. There was something about being naked outside, with the sea breeze and the open sky above and hot water cascading down her back at a luxurious pressure, that put Laurel back in touch with her center. And this would be one of the last times she would get to use it.

Laurel was unhappy about her conversation with Scarlett. Laurel should never have told Scarlett about St. John.

Scarlett had wanted to revisit the topic on the way home. “So what you’re telling me is that after the big Deacon-Belinda fight, Deacon called you, and then the two of you went to St. John?”

Oh, how Laurel had wanted to retract the whole story, but she couldn’t. She nodded.

Scarlett said, “I guess I can see that. Deacon probably wanted someone he was comfortable with.”

As though Laurel were an old shoe, a song he knew by heart, a bowl of rice pudding with raisins. It may have started out that way… the plans had fallen into place without either of them thinking about what it meant. Deacon had said something about “owing” Laurel a “really nice” vacation.

Laurel had said, You don’t owe me anything, Deacon. And Deacon had said, We’ll get a suite at Caneel Bay. You deserve the best.

The hotel had been glorious, the finest place Laurel had ever stayed. Deacon had booked an oceanfront suite on Honeymoon Beach. They had risen out of bed only to pour more Laurent-Perrier rose and eat ripe mango and crispy conch fritters with curry aioli. They swam in the middle of the night, naked, under a blanket of stars. One night, there had been wild donkeys on the beach, which had scared them both, then sent them into paroxysms of laughter. They took a sailboat over to Jost van Dyke and drank painkillers at the Soggy Dollar. One night they had ventured into the town of Cruz Bay and drank rum punch and danced to a steel drum band.

You are so sexy, Deacon had said. You are so much fun.

Laurel emerged from the outdoor shower wrapped in a towel. It was almost worse to know that a third of the house they were going to lose would have been hers. If Buck hadn’t told her, she would have left on Tuesday morning feeling grateful that she had gotten one last chance to stay in the house, but she wouldn’t have carried this sense of loss. However briefly it had been that she had believed the house to be hers-a minute? Two?-the mere concept had struck her like a sky filled with dazzling, colorful fireworks. The house on Nantucket, the place where she had spent the happiest days of her fifty-three years, would have been hers to share with Hayes and Angie and, someday, their children.

Laurel sighed. Deacon had always been terrible with money. He had grown up without any, so when he finally started making a decent salary-after he landed the job at Solo, followed quickly by the first TV show-he spent it lavishly. He was generous, sometimes irresponsibly so-buying a round for everyone at the bar, that kind of thing. If Deacon had money, everyone around him had money. Laurel wasn’t surprised to hear he’d paid for Scarlett’s father’s bankruptcy attorney. That was what he did.

Laurel sat on the deck for a moment, gazing over the golf course and the pond; the lighthouse winked at her like it had a secret. Buck came out wearing just his bathing trunks and a towel around his neck. He was holding a beer and a glass of wine.

“This is a send-out from Chef Thorpe,” he said. Laurel squinted up at him. “Chef Angela Thorpe.” He handed Laurel the wine. “You look quite fetching in that towel.”

“Buck.”

He took the seat next to her. “The thing with Belinda was a mistake. I’ll regret it the rest of my life, especially if it means I’ve lost my chance with you.”

Laurel sipped her wine. Let it go, she thought. Things were tough for everyone. Then she heard the voice of Ursula.

Men cheat. That’s what they do.

Laurel wanted to believe there were men who didn’t cheat. She wanted to believe Buck was one of them.

“Why did your marriages end?” she asked him.

Buck laughed. “Wow, are we really doing this?”

“I’m curious,” Laurel said. She had known Jessica a little. Back at the beginning of Buck and Deacon’s friendship, the four of them had gone out in the city together on the rare nights that Deacon and Buck both had off and Laurel could find a babysitter. So, probably three times. Jessica had been a bit Upper East Side pretentious. She had gone to Nightingale-Bamford with Buck’s cousin, Macy; that was how she and Buck had met. When she heard Laurel was from Dobbs Ferry, she’d assumed Laurel had gone to Masters, and her face had fallen when Laurel said, “No, just regular Dobbs Ferry High School.”

Jessica had been one of many people to completely drop Laurel and join Team Belinda when Deacon did. Laurel had bumped into Jessica at the Frick Museum and Jessica had breezed right past her without a word or a wave.

Laurel had met Mae briefly at Hayes’s graduation from Vanderbilt, but by the time Hayes had found a job and moved to Soho, Buck was filing for divorce.

Buck said, “Well, Jessica wanted children and I didn’t. That ended marriage number one. And Mae never made the bed, she flooded the bathroom every time she took a shower, and she chewed with her mouth open. That ended marriage number two.”

“You weren’t unfaithful?” Laurel asked.

“Work is a cruel mistress,” Buck said. “Most women can’t handle coming in second place.”

“I bet I’m busier than you are,” Laurel said.

“You might be,” Buck said. “So we can both be busy and neither of us will get mad about it and we’ll live happily ever after.”

“Buck.”

He reached for her hand. “I like you, Laurel.”

Her heart fluttered, despite herself. She hadn’t felt this way since she was a freshman in high school and Deacon had asked to walk her home, and then they stopped in the parking lot of the Grand Union and Deacon had kissed her for the first time. Laurel had thought that because he was from the city, he might be self-assured, but both of them had bumbled through the first kiss-lips, tongues, teeth, hands.

Laurel was thinking of this first kiss as Buck leaned in, and suddenly it was Buck’s lips on hers, and he was a lot more skilled than Deacon had been back in 1977. This kiss was lovely; he tasted like the sea. His mouth opened, his tongue found hers, soft yet insistent, and Laurel thought, Wow, chemistry. There was nothing like the electric jolt of kissing someone for the first time.

But then an alarm went off in Laurel’s head, shrill and piercing. She wasn’t going to do this. She pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Laurel…,” he said.

She shook her head and stood up, clenching her towel tight. Part of her knew she was being stubborn and probably also daft. She shouldn’t let Belinda poison something as sweet as that kiss.

“I like you, too, Buck,” Laurel said. “But I have principles.” And with that, she entered the house, closing the sliding screen door gently behind her. She had stuck to her guns, but the kiss had lit her up like a constellation, with stars in her head, her chest, her legs.

One good thing, she thought, was that she no longer felt like an old shoe.

At quarter to four, it was time to go to Sconset to get the baguettes. Belinda had brought the truck home in one piece, which was, frankly, a relief, although she was acting a little tipsy, and she smelled like wine.

“Where did you go?” Angie asked. “A bar?”

“Don’t be silly,” Belinda said.

It was silly. Angie tried to picture Belinda sliding onto a bar stool at the Nautilus or the Starlight and drinking by herself on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe she had poured her heart out to Johnny B. at Ventuno: Stuck in a house with my ex-husband’s other wives and their children.

“You went drinking somewhere,” Angie said. “And you don’t have any friends here. So you must have gone to a bar.”

“It’s none of your business, Nancy Drew,” Belinda said, and she headed upstairs.

Angie squeezed behind the wheel of Deacon’s truck and moved the seat way back. By the time she reached the bottom of the driveway, her phone started to beep. She turned onto Hoicks Hollow Road, and, since the speed limit was ten miles an hour and there was no one on the road, she checked her phone.

She gasped and pulled over.

There was a missed call from Joel Tersigni.

He had called at 2:05, nearly two hours earlier. Two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Dory didn’t work on weekends, so she would be home-or maybe at the boys’ lacrosse game. Or maybe Dory was still in possession of Joel’s phone, and it was Dory who had called. Maybe she had come across more texts or photos; maybe Joel had shared more intimate details. Angie wanted to call back-God, did she want to call back-but if Dory answered… No, Angie couldn’t risk it. Angie imagined drawing back the string of the bow, lining up the pin through the peep sight, and letting go. Wheeeeeeeeee! She imagined spearing both Joel and Dory through the heart. Kill shot.

She thought about JP in his hat and his sunglasses, with his easy smile and his passion for the outdoors. Would it be easier to love someone like JP, someone her own age, someone who had time to spend with her and an interest in showing her things? Someone who had been hurt himself and could teach her a thing or two about survival?

As she pulled into the parking lot of the Sconset Market, the smell of warm, freshly baked bread hit her. Angie loved bread. She and Deacon used to play a game called Final Meal. Their answers changed according to season and mood, but Angie always started with Parker House rolls and sweet butter. And Deacon always started with pizza.

The market was tiny and quaint, not unlike small-town markets elsewhere, except this one had a sophisticated selection of French cheese-Angie plucked out a soft, gooey Langres, which was difficult to find, even in New York. Angie got in a line forming at the register, where a straw basket was piled high with baguettes.

“Two please,” Angie said. “And the Langres.”

She paid the cashier and carried the warm loaves and the cheese out to the Chevy. As she started the ignition, she considered driving out to Coatue to find JP so that she could invite him to dinner. But then she decided against it. Laurel, Belinda, and Scarlett were going to sit down to eat together for the first time ever. No stranger should be subjected to that.

Back at the house, Angie pulled out the blue and white checked bistro tablecloth from the pantry and four matching napkins and three linen napkins that evoked the goldenrod crayon in Angie’s long-ago box of Crayolas. She set the table. The wide, shallow bowls in the cabinet were impractical for cereal but perfect for chowder, and Angie put a dinner plate underneath each; and, although none of the dishes matched, it still looked okay. Sort of. She shook her head, thinking about how extravagant Deacon had been when selecting dishes for the Board Room. Four of the nine courses had their own custom-made dishes, most of these one of a kind, purchased from individual artisans throughout the Northeast. The caviar sets cost more than $200 apiece. Deacon argued that for most people, dinner at the Board Room would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he wanted every aspect of it to be inimitable, unforgettable.